The Balance of Things
by Sister Coyote
Summary: Strength, strength, and not to run away, or fade away... Gabranth. Backstory, gen.


The road they took out of Landis City was not the main highway. Though Archadia lifted its troops and supplies in by air, still they had claimed that road, marked it, patrolled it with armies, set up checkpoints and cross-checks, and it rumbled continually with supplywagons and troop transports. The back road was badly-rutted dirt, blocked here or there by boulders or a fallen pine, but it was much more lightly patrolled, and the military seemed more interested in keeping looters out than refugees in. They turned a blind eye to the straggling clumps of people escaping the city—as though there were anywhere left to escape to.

It shamed Noah, and angered him, this escape—and shamed and angered him more that it was by the scant mercy of the soldiers that they made good on it. Every time he saw a dull-iron figure look aside, as though they were not worth the trouble of drawing blade, he simmered more. He would have done something for it, save for the weight of Basch against his shoulder, limping a little; were Noah to start a fight, Basch would risk grave injury.

He bore the wound to his pride as he bore his brother: with as much grace as he could muster. It was all he could do.

By night, they left the road and went a space into the woods, where the shuffling sounds of other travelers and the rare but steady clank-and-thump of soldiers on patrol would not disturb them. Basch lit a fire and Noah snared a rabbit, and their meal was food, if not good food. By winter this forest would be picked clean.

"I can manage a spell of healing now, I think," he said.

Basch winced. "I believe that would be a waste of power. It is only a sprain, nothing more." An inglorious injury, to be sure, but nonetheless Noah stripped the boot from his foot and put his hands on the swollen joint; it was hot to the touch. It took only a little power, and then the strain was melting from Basch's face, and he flexed his foot and sighed. "Thank you."

The rabbit was tough, and so they ate largely in silence, chewing at the sinewy meat. When they had finished and scattered the bones for scavengers, Noah said, "The road will take us to the Highwater Crossroads, and from there we can go on to Hashenan or Vhunor—the resistance in Vhunor is stronger, I understand, but Hashenan has attracted less Imperial attention. It may be better to—"

"Neither Hashenan nor Vhunor will stand long against Archadia," Basch said, very quietly. He was looking not at Noah but into the fire, and Noah could see red and gold reflected in his eyes.

"They will stand longer," Noah said, "if we are there."

"As long as Landis City stood?" Basch shifted his gaze from the fire to the sky. "Come, brother; you are no more a fool than am I. You must see that this war is lost. It has been for years, to say the truth."

"Then what would you have us do?"

"At the Highwater Crossroads we should take the road to Vhunor, and from there south to Ehrensol and to the steppes, and from there south, to Dalmasca."

Noah stared. "You have had this planned."

Basch closed his eyes. "I hoped not to need the plan."

"For how long?"

"Since the battle on the Greatstreet Bridge. When the Bridge fell, I suspected we were not fated to win this war."

Noah's chest felt tight. He prodded the fire with a stick. "You gave up."

"I—was realistic." He looked, finally, at Noah. "Was I wrong?"

Noah said nothing. The stick dislodged one of the logs, sending a spiral of sparks into the air. The smoke that stung his eyes smelled strongly of pine-resin.

"We will continue to fight," Basch said. "Dalmasca has—has no love for the Empire either. Their army will take us in, I think, and we can—"

"—abandon the Republic," Noah said. "Abandon Landis."

"Do what we can."

"Instead of what we must?" The tightness in Noah's chest found its release in swift breaths that came as though pummeled from his lungs. "Together, we could—we must—"

"We are only two people." Basch returned his gaze to the sky.

"You have no faith. We could do _anything_."

"We could not save Landis."

Again Noah said nothing, but jabbed the stick so deep into the fire that it caught flame. He left it there.

Basch continued, after a moment broken only by the snapping of the fire, "Well. Whatever path we take, it will lead us to the Highwater Crossing—and perhaps even to Vhunor. We can discuss this tomorrow, and the next day if need be."

Still Noah said nothing, but turned on his side. The fire seared his face, but his side against the earth was cold, and damp even through the cloak he had spread on the ground.

The next day—and the day after, and the day after that, all the way to Highwater and then to Vhunor—they argued, and did not speak, and argued again; made stilted conversation that degraded quickly into silence, or more argument. It was nearly as much a blow as it had been to stand on the first rise of the road and look back at Landis City burning down.

When they rounded the bend that lead into Vhunor, Noah knew at last that he would not win this fight. Were there resistance here, it was breaking, or broken; one building was afire, and a quartet of heavily-armed soldiers marched a straggle of men toward the makeshift guardhouse. His heart did not so much sink as turn to cold water, and then dissipate, and in its place high in his chest he felt an ember burst into full flame. He looked at Basch and knew, and _knew_, and so did not wait for him to speak before he said, "So you will go."

Basch nodded, and then said, "Come with me."

"I will not betray Landis," he said, shaking and trying not to shake, angry more in that moment at his brother even than at the Imperials who had burned the houses and arrested the dissidents. "You would leave us both?"

"I do what I must," Basch said. "I do what I can. There is no future for us here. Elsewhere we can build a future, but here—"

"Build it yourself," he said, bitter as the ashes on the wind. He turned aside, and would not look again into the face that was his own face. "Go, then."

"Say me goodbye, at least, brother?" Basch asked, and his voice wavered.

Noah said nothing, and did not look again until he heard Basch's footsteps dwindle in the distance, on the road to Dalmasca and the south.

That night he went to the inn at Vhunor, and for the first time ordered drink after drink until he could barely stand, and went to bed, and was glad in the morning that he had done so, for he did not dream.

* * *

He did not often drink as much as he had the first night; it seemed cowardice, to run from his dreams. But he spent many nights in taverns, for he had been used to company all his life—from the moment he was born—and even though he was rarely of a mood for conversation, still the noise was better than the long silence of the road. He became accustomed to the dust that accompanied him everywhere—thick on his boots, on his traveling cloak, in his hair and on his skin. He became accustomed to pine tar from the trees, and to bad wine that grew worse with every month, and bad food that grew scarcer and more expensive with every month.

He fell in from time to time with resistance groups, but fighting without his brother was like fighting without one leg—he was ever off-balance, never quite stable, never quite whole. He resented that. He did not want to need his brother. His brother did not need _him_, had not wanted to keep fighting. And yet, and yet.

Every day, though he did not want to, he traced his brother's passage on his maps. Three days to the steppes; a week to cross them, or two if the weather turned against him; another week to Rabanastre if he could hire passage with a caravan, or three on foot. Then he was in Rabanastre , and Noah closed his mind to that, to the thought of his brother swearing fealty to an alien country, a _kingdom_ not a republic, a place that was not his, or theirs.

He drifted from one town to another, hiring his sword to kill marks, living in the margins, burning under his skin, and he could not say whether he felt more bitterly angry at Archadia or at Basch.

* * *

It was a tremendous relief when the brawl gave him an excuse to vent his fury and frustration.

He did not start it—he was not so foolish. In truth he had no idea what started it: most likely nothing more complicated than too many rounds of rotgut and an insult, imagined or real. He knew intimately, by then, the way the tension in the room grew, the slurred words, the sudden eruption into violence.

He was happy enough to unsheath the sword at his back, because there was an Archadian soldier in the room, and in the fracas —

He did not even have a chance to come close to the soldier, however, because a barstool met the blade of his sword. The edge cut deep into wood, and he pushed back, forcing the stool against his assailant's head—and then was seized from behind by two hands in his shirt, and brought his sword around to smack the offender with the flat of his blade and then brain him with the hilt, and he had lost sight of the soldier but there was another man, flushed with drink, coming at him with a poniard, and then the blood descended before his eyes and he moved with an efficiency and skill he had not known since . . .

He did not stop until he was brought up short by the clang of a blade against his own, a deadlock-block, and looked up and into the blank helm of an Archadian Judge. Through his fury he felt a surge of fear, because he could more than hold his own in a brawl against men who fought but rarely, for sport or in anger, but a man who had studied the blade as thoroughly as he did, but for longer —

They struggled for minutes, and he was proud of that, and glad of it, for the sake of his pride: thrust, parry, dance backward, lunge. But in the end the Judge's heavy blade struck once, too hard, and he was afraid for one moment that it would shatter his sword, but instead the reverberations rang up through his fingers and made him drop it. Momentum sent it spinning to the floor, and keep spinning, out of sight.

He stood, breathing hard, eyes on the long sword before him, waiting for the death-blow. It did not fall.

"You acquit yourself well," said the man in the helm. "Better than your surroundings would imply."

Noah kept his face impassive by pure effort of will, and did not deign to look around at the overturned benches, the sticky puddles of spilled wine, the detritus of poverty, the innkeeper cowering in the kitchen. It had been a long war.

One of the soldiers behind the Judge—he had not until then recognized that he came with reinforcements—said, "Well enough, for a vherbolg," and the others snickered. It was a common slander for a man of Landis—the skulking, rodent-hunting predator whose jaws locked and did not let go in a fight; common slander for someone too stupid to stop fighting even when the battle was lost and more than lost.

Noah's muscles tensed, and he reached for the sword that was no longer strapped across his back.

"Well enough for anyone," the man in the helm said, and raised the visor. He was darker than Noah would have expected, darker than most of the Archadian soldiers he had seen. A man of the west, perhaps, or the north?

"We who fight for our freedom do not readily back down," Noah said stiffly.

"But he who is trapped in the echoes of a battle long ago lost can never be free," said the man.

"I am a man of Landis," Noah said, "and ever will be." No deserter coward like his brother, fleeing to the embrace of another nation —

"But Landis is now Archadia," said the Judge, "and you one of her sons, now, unwilling or not. And Archadia is a stern mother, but a strong one."

Noah set his jaw and looked away. He waited for the command to arrest him; it did not come. The Judge said, "A tavern brawl is hardly worth our attention, men. Move out."

He was not sure whether it was a compliment or an insult that they did not search for and retrieve his sword, where it lay beneath one of the tables. He was sure that it was no oversight. He found it too incredible to believe that the man—the Judge—he had spoken to, however briefly, would be one to make such a gross mistake.

It was an insult, then, or a trap, or an offer, and some small part of him told him that it would be safer to leave it on the floor, as if they had confiscated it. He did not. He retrieved it, wiping spilled liquor and crumbs from the flat and testing the edge before sliding it back into its sheath.

He wondered why they had left him his strength.

* * *

That night, he dreamed of his brother, and woke angry, and empty, and hungry. _Landis,_ he thought.

He went to the Archadian guard outpost that was a new fixture in every town in what had once been Landis, and though he told himself that he was there, perhaps he would draw his sword and slay the Judge as vengeance for his city.

He knew this was not true, but he told himself anyway, as he went up the stairs. The soldiers opened the doors for him, as if he were expected.

The Judge rose to his feet, and Noah felt his world shift around him, suddenly; as though he had lost a limb long ago, only to find it suddenly replaced. His balance returned—not as it had been, but there, there, a strength that was not warm or gentle but that was enough to lean upon. Strength for rebuilding, strength for Landis, strength that had left him when —

"I expected to see you," the Judge said. "Noah fon Ronseburg."

He could hear his brother's name echoing behind those words. "Gabranth," he said, all impulse, naming a common Archadian name. "Gabranth." _Strength,_ he thought, _strength, and not to run away, or fade away . . . _

"Welcome, Gabranth," said the man, without missing a beat. "I am Judge Zecht of the Imperial Military. How can I help you?"

Noah—Gabranth, Gabranth—drew his sword. Judge Zecht stiffened, but Gabranth knelt, and laid it across his knees. A compliment, and an offering; he pride could interpret it no other way.

"And what do you ask in return?" Judge Zecht's voice was very soft.

"I will not back down," Gabranth said. "I will fight. I will always fight. I am a son of Landis." He swallowed. Vherbolg, angry creature, teeth sunk in, no turning back. "And if that makes me a son of Archadia as well, now, then so be it. I will not turn my face away."

Zecht smiled again, with pleasure, or satisfaction, "Then rise and take up your sword and be welcome, Gabranth of Archadia."


End file.
